Playboy's Student Survey: 1971

Seven years ago, Mario Savio, wearing a sheepskin jacket and hair that was short by today's lengths, led 800 students into Sproul Hall to be arrested. And for six years after that, America was at war with her students. It moved through sit-ins, teach-ins, confrontations and riots. Nearly two generations of middle-class students tasted tear gas and went to jail. Police saw campuses only through the tinted visors of riot helmets. The old men who had edited education sections of the daily papers were replaced by younger journalists, who frequently seemed more like combat reporters as they filed their dispatches from Berkeley, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Lawrence, Kansas, and Madison, Wisconsin.

And then, in late 1970, the war seemed to end. Almost just like that. Only a semester before, there had been burnings and bombings and finally the inevitable and brutal killing of six students. But when the new academic year began, everything was quiet. It stayed that way through the fall and winter, and finally through a nervous spring.

The calm settled so quickly across the campuses that it was called uneasy. But it wasn't, really. The pacific mood of students was confirmed everywhere. Hard rock, political rock, acid rock fell first to James Taylor and then to his whole family singing tender, introspective songs about tiny love affairs. Organic gardens grew up around the edges of campus communities and became a personal way to reverse the poisoning of the environment. Jesus freaks wandered the colleges and the towns nearby, pushing their gentle apolitical message. Dealers wandered the campuses, too, selling drugs--marijuana, mostly--not as magic potions, as they had before, but as "something to get you off ... get you into yourself." Even booze enjoyed something of a comeback.

And then Howdy Doody showed up on campus. And instead of burning that little wooden-headed symbol of their childhood--in the quad, where they had burned so many other symbols--students filled gymnasiums to sing out an answer to Buffalo Bob's question.

"What time is it?"

"It's Howdy Doody time!"

The winding down of the Indochina war was the reason most often given for the defusing of the student movement. Though students didn't like or trust their President, it did seem like a time to wait. Along with that was the angry sadness, the defeat students felt. The war was ending, but not, somehow, because of anything they'd done--or refused to do.

What politics there were on campus became practical and moved into the community. The voting age was lowered to 18 and the leaders who had learned all their organizational skills on the wrong side of the barricades now began to organize voter-registration drives in college communities and were running candidates with long hair. And in Berkeley they won.

But mostly, students turned in on themselves this last year. For if the political revolution that had gone on for so long had largely failed, the cultural revolution--ideas about sex and drugs and family and career--had been profound. Now students had a set of personal styles to practice that were very different from those of the generation they had been struggling with.

To chart the moods behind the quiet, Playboy again this year conducted a national sampling of college students to find out what they thought and felt about their political, social and sexual worlds. The results are startlingly different from those of the poll conducted in 1970.

Mario Savio and Bob Dylan have turned 30 and everything on campus has changed. One of the students wrote on the bottom of his ballot: "The people who (continued on page 208)Student Survey: 1971(continued from page 118) made up this questionnaire should have planted a garden instead."

• • •

Vital Issues: When conservationist David Brower is asked what America should worry about before all else, he says, "There are no hawks and no doves, no blacks and no whites--on a dead planet."

This year, for the first time, students agreed with him. They put environmental pollution first on a worry list of 22 vital issues we asked them to rate. The war in Indochina is second. Here's the way they arranged the first ten issues.

The fact that pollution has replaced the war as the students' primary concern in just one year's time seems to indicate not only a quieting of feelings on that conflict but also a greatly increased feeling that we aren't moving fast enough to halt the poisoning of our planet.

As they did when Vietnam was the paramount issue, students tended to blame the Administration for our environmental problems. In marking the statement that came closest to their feeling about the President's efforts to clean up the air and water, 58 percent of them said they thought the Nixon Administration is foot dragging on pollution-control enforcement. Another 39 percent blamed industry for not taking the initiative, and only three percent said that the Administration was moving effectively to clean things up.

This new concern with ecology as the overriding issue is confirmed by the problem they put in third place on the chart: the population explosion. We found, however, in their answers to another question, that 47 percent of the students still intend to have two children. And 25 percent said they want more than two.

Again this year, students indicated that women's rights were not a major issue: They ranked it 22nd on the list; and even among women, only 18 percent said they were very worried about it. Twenty-eight percent said they were worried, and the majority--54 percent--said they were not worried about it. Other things students indicated little concern about include a computerized society, communism, the growing power of Red China and business attitudes toward consumers.

Nixon Conduct of The War: Attitudes toward the war have been muted to a surprising degree on campus, as students wait to see if the apparent winding down of U. S. involvement will continue.

Again this year, a clear majority--53 percent--either opposed or strongly opposed the Nixon conduct of the war. But that figure is down from 65 percent last year. The group that has gained strength is in the middle: the ones who said they didn't completely support the Nixon policies. And the increase in this group came not only from those who last year opposed the war but also from those who indicated complete support for the President. At that time, 26 percent said they supported Nixon's policies; that figure is now down to 11 percent, a drop of 15 percent. The number of hawks has diminished, too: In our 1970 poll, nine percent said they wanted more aggressive action in Indochina; this year, only four percent wanted such action.

Protest Activity: Indicative of this reduced opposition to the war is the fact that students, in the past year, have moved less often into the quad and the streets to protest it. Asked the reasons for this abrupt diminution of antiwar protest, the largest percentage--28 percent--said that, in general, student apathy was responsible. Another 25 percent said they doubted the effectiveness of demonstration as a tactic. Fifteen percent felt lack of leadership was to blame and 13 percent said they thought it was fear of repression. Only eight percent of the students said the lack of protest was due to greater satisfaction with the way things were going, and ten percent said they didn't know what the cause was.

We asked them if they would join a protest demonstration in the future.

The surprising statistic here, in view of the lack of antiwar activity on campus last year, is the large number of students (46 percent) who said they would join some protest group (violent or nonviolent) in the future. This figure--along with the fact that the leaders arrested in the May Day demonstrations last spring were old-line and nearly inactive--perhaps indicates that in lack of leadership is a more important factor in the cooling of the campuses than students think. Again, 33 percent expressed doubt about protest as an effective tactic.

The Vote:Extension of the franchise to 18-year-olds in national elections, perhaps more than any other single factor, seems to have taken the heat out of students political feelings. When we asked first about what students thought the significance of the vote would be, and then whether they intended to register, the results were overwhelmingly optimistic.

(continued overleaf)

The facts that only three percent felt the 18-year-old vote couldn't possibly have any significance and that only four percent intend to stay away from the polls in 1972 indicate that faith in the democratic process is far from dead among students. Even among the 43 percent who think the vote probably won't make much difference, the great majority intend to vote. To find how that potential turnout could affect the Presidency, we asked how they felt about the Nixon Administration.

Nearly 60 percent of the student population said they would like to see Nixon out of office. That figure would represent about three percent of the total U.S. vote in 1972. Assuming that their feeling stays the same, or guessing that it could grow, it may well have a significant impact on the election: In 1968, Nixon went to the White House with a margin of less than one percent of the popular vote.

The Guilt for My Lai: Students were very unhappy with the verdict in the court-martial of Lieutenant William Calley. We gave them six choices and asked them to place the blame for the My Lai massacre by circling as many as they thought applied. (This explains why the percentage total on the chart is 152 percent.)

Students placed the heaviest blame on the two faceless bureaucracies, the Army and the Government, and a small percentage chose both. Only 23 percent agreed with the court-martial board that Calley was responsible for his actions.

It's difficult to guess what lies behind this attitude of absolution. Perhaps by casting Lieutenant Calley as a hopeless pawn of the Army and his Government, students were expressing their own feeling of hopelessness in the face of a war they hate and have opposed vigorously for years but cannot seem to stop.

Drugs: The drug culture that began to grow on campus in the Sixties is now a heavy part of the life style practiced by most of America's students. The majority of them use alcohol and grass for their highs, but a large number of them are also into amphetamines and barbiturates, mescaline and LSD, and a growing number are experimenting with hard drugs--cocaine and heroin.

We asked the students about each of the drugs: how much they use, whether they intend to use them in the future and, in the case of marijuana, why they use it, how they feel about the laws, how easy it is to get and even how much it costs.

Alcohol: Liquor is not commonly included in the catalog of dangerous drugs. In fact, this year a reported rise in its use was taken as a sign of hope. In the Illinois legislature, a bill to legalize beer for 18-year-olds was introduced because, some lawmakers said, "Alcohol is better than pot." Alcohol is a drug, however, sometimes addictive, harmful to the body, used pretty much for the same reasons other drugs are used, and illegal under most conditions for the two thirds of our sample who are under 21 years of age. We asked students how often they had taken a drink.

Nearly all college students--94 percent--have tried alcohol, and 80 percent reported regular use. Women use slightly less than men--a pattern that holds true for most other drugs. And drinking increases with age: 83 percent of the 17-year-olds reported using alcohol, and that figure increases to 95 percent for 22-year-olds. In a breakdown by academic majors, those studying business drink the most, 88 percent reporting regular use, and those studying education drink the least, with only 75 percent regular users. When we asked whether or not students intended to use alcohol in the future, 88 percent said yes and 12 percent said no.

Pot: Marijuana is the only drug on campus that seriously challenges alcohol for popularity. Its use is so widespread that the laws against it are being called the New Prohibition. The President thinks it is crucial enough to the general drug problem that in his June press conference he said, for the second time, that he is against its legalization. Serious, longterm studies on its adverse effects are still lacking and, considering its widespread consumption, users know relatively little about where it comes from, how its cut or even how it reaches the underground market.

We found over-all marijuana use up a startling 15 percent over last year. If that rate of growth continues, pot will be as popular as booze in two years.

We asked students how often they had smoked pot. (continued overleaf)

The increase in pot use over last year is slightly greater among women, though there are still ten percent fewer women smoking than men. Another dramatic rise shows among those who say they are frequent users. This year, 39 percent said they use often; last year, that figure was 13 percent.

Again, as with alcohol, the use of pot rises in direct relation to a student's age. Of the 17-year-olds, 56 percent reported they are users, and that figure increases to 67 percent for 22-year-olds.

Despite the great increase in marijuana use, we found that a fair percentage of student users aren't convinced that their pot use is an entirely positive thing. When we asked if they planned to use pot again in the near future, 21 percent of the users said no.

We also gave them a list of the four reasons most commonly given for pot use and asked them to rate them. They said they used pot for: one, relaxation; two, mind expansion; three, status among peers; and four, escape. When we asked them if pot was easy to get on campus, 85 percent said yes and only two percent said no; 13 percent said they didn't know. The largest percentage of students--48 percent--said they paid less than $20 an ounce for pot (though price fluctuates by seasons and location) and 36 percent said they didn't know how much it cost.

Because of the number of students now using marijuana, the job of enforcing the laws against it is virtually impossible. This was confirmed when we asked the marijuana users in our sample if they had ever been busted: Only three percent said they had. Stories about pot busts seem to circulate widely, however, and probably contribute to the general, and unfounded, fear: 57 percent of the students said they knew someone who had been arrested on marijuana charges. Students may worry about it, but reported arrests indicate that pot has become nearly legal by default on U.S. campuses.

But will pot be legalized by the lawmakers? Of the students polled, 27 percent believed the laws would be changed within five years. Another 40 percent said it would be legalized but that it would take more than five years. Only 16 percent said it would never be legal and another 17 percent said they didn't know. So most students--67 percent--believe that even if they're arrested for possession of pot now, sometime in the future their records will be nullified, in effect, by its legalization.

Other Drugs: Again this year, we found that students are much more cautious about their use of drugs generally classified as harder than alcohol or pot. Speed (amphetamines), downers (sleeping pills and other barbiturates), mescaline, LSD, cocaine and heroin--although their use has generally risen--are not used nearly as much as the two favorites.

Amphetamines: Use of speed--generally to stay awake for long periods of crammed study--is up sharply: 12 percent. However, almost half the users said they didn't intend to take the drug again.

Barbiturates: The 22 percent who reported use of barbiturates is up by seven percent over last year's reported use. Again this year, women reported use in exactly the same over-all percentage that men did and slightly higher for frequent use. This is the only drug in which female use does not trail male use by a significant margin. Almost half the students who use barbiturates said they intended to stop.

Mescaline: Nearly one fifth of all students have tried this hallucinogen and over one third of the users said they intended to stay away from it in the future.

Lsd: Use of acid is up only two percent over last year, probably reflecting continued reports of possible harmful effects. Over half of those who use it say they will stop.

Cocaine: National statistics on the use of cocaine indicate that this once nearly forgotten drug is enjoying a comeback. This disturbing trend seems to be reflected on campus. Of the seven percent use our sample reported, four percent said they had used cocaine one to three times, one percent said four to nine times and two percent said they had used it ten times or more. Only 27 percent of the users said they intended to stay away from the drug in the future.

Heroin: Despite the reported epidemic use of heroin on the streets and by soldiers in Vietnam, the campus statistics for this drug show only a slight increase, if any. Fewer than one percent of the total admitted being addicted to the drug, and of the users, 45 percent said they will stop.

Sexual Behavior: The amount of sexual activity on the campus has remained, overall, virtually the same as it was last year. But there has been a surprising shift among the number of men and women reporting that they are virgins: This year, there were five percent fewer female virgins than we found in 1970 and five percent more male virgins.

(Continued overleaf)

In all previous surveys of this nature, males have reported a higher rate of sexual activity than females. This year, although males are still reporting higher frequency, their rate of activity shifted downward, while female activity continued to rise--a totally new phenomenon.

Although the numbers themselves are not significant, the trend is. Traditionally, women have been more sexually conservative than men; consequently, female activity is the barometer by which a true sexual revolution is measured. Apparently, distaff behavior is beginning to match the freedom to communicate about sex that has been growing since the late Fifties, and the attitudinal revolution shows evidence of becoming a behavioral one. Why the males report a drop in their sexual initiation rates, however, is not easy to explain. Certainly, another of the changing aspects of the sexual culture among the young has been a decline in the American male's traditional preoccupation with virility. Men are not as concerned with such imagery--or fantasization--as their fathers were. This may suggest habits more frankly and honestly. This could well be responsible for the lower--and perhaps more realistic--male-activity figures this year. Through a demographic breakdown by age and sex, our figures indicate that men on campus lose their virginity between the ages of 19 and 20 while girls lose theirs between 21 and 22.

Our figures indicate a startlingly low percentage of reported homosexuality on campus. Only one precent of the males and two percent of the females states that they were exclusive homosexuals. This compares with Kinsey's national averages of four percent for males and three percent for females. This is particularly surprising because of the emergence in full force of gay-liberation groups on many campuses, which would lead one to expect more homosexuals than ever to "come out." On the other hand, sociologists say that a sexually free society--because of its emphasis on heterosexuality--produces fewer homosexuals; thus this low reporting percentage may be a result of the increasing freedom in America.

We asked students if their most recent sexual experience (intercourse and/or foreplay) had been satisfying, and if they felt any guilt afterward.

Women still seem to have a slightly harder time getting satisfaction than men; but in the two categories that indicate over-all satisfaction, they are virtually equal with the men. The same is true in the figures that indicated frustration. We found also only slight variations in those reporting satisfaction in the demographic categories of age, class, major subject, religion, economic background, living arrangments and marital status.

An overwhelming majority of both male and female students reported that they felt little or no guilt about engaging in sex. These figures are another major indicator of the strength of the sexual revolution in attitudes.

One of the popular images of young people and their sexual behavior is that of a pansexual pattern, the sharing of many and diverse partners as a matter of course. To find out how true this is, we asked students how many people they had intercourse, with, on separate occasions, over the past month.

Women continue to be somewhat more loyal than men to a single partner, but overall, students' sexual experiences seem mostly to be confined to one person. A nearly equal number of men and women reported having three or more partners. In light of this, we asked students about communal living, including the sharing of sexual partners.

Men and women are very close in their generally negative attitude toward communes; however, one third of the women and slightly more than one third of the men haven't made up their minds. We got further clarification from this group by asking whether or not they would like to try communal living themselves.

(Concluded overleaf)

Here, a majority--60 percent of the men and 49 percent of the women--said they would like to try it sometime, either with or without the open sharing of sexual partners. More men were for the sharing of partners (38 percent) than against it (22 percent). The women reversed the figures: Only 18 percent though overt mate sharing would work, while 31 percent said they would prefer to try it without trading partners.

And 11 percent more women than men didn't want to try communal living at all. Whether or not, in fact, men are bolder about this than women is questionable. Among the small percentage of students reporting that they are living in a commune, the figures for men and women are equal.

Among the demographic differences of interest in the commune question were the results we found in relation to the student's economic background. Of those reporting that they grew up in a household that had under $5000 a year to live on, only 20 percent indicated any kind of interest in trying a commune. This figure increased directly in proportion to income, so that 33 percent--the high--of those students who came from over-$25,000 families said they would like to try communal living.

Drugs and Sex: Getting her stoned on booze used to be the way to get her to bed. Or so the old machismo folklore had it. In order to find out if folklore had it. In order to find out if this pattern is also true of the pot culture, we asked about the use both of alcohol and of pot prior to lovemaking.

The figures for use of alcohol among men and women before intercourse indicate that men need whatever bolstering or relaxing effects alcohol possesses more than women do. Only four percent (Alcohol Use Chart), but nine percent more use it before they get involved sexually.

For marijuana, the difference is somewhat less. Ten percent more males use pot overall than females do, but only seven percent more males than females do before sex. In general, the figures seem to show that students like to get a little high before they make love.

Regional Differences: For our survey, we divided the country into five regions: West, Southwest, Central, South and East. The differences, for the most part, were minimal. The country is becoming increasingly homogeneous, as indeed it has been for a long time. Some notable regional differences did crop up, however. Both the East and the West lead, predictably, in their dissatisfaction with the war and the Nixon Administration in general. The East leads all others in general drug use (LSD, mescaline, cocaine, heroin) and shares highest pot use with the West. Western students drink less than those in the rest of the country and, surprisingly, have a higher population of virgins than any other region.

The South shows the most stalwart general general support for President Nixon and has double the national average of hawks. Dixie also worries less about pollution and the one drug with a heavier use in the South than in the rest of the country is the amphetamines. And the central region--Middle America--was on the national average in almost all responses.

• • •

The calm on campus last year seems to have sprung, after all, from a deep and subtle change of consciousness in students. That part of the campus revolution that was dramatic and violent, that saw issues in all-or-nothing-at-all terms, seems to be gone. And though the postrevolutionary style is quieter, our survey reveals that the nation's campuses are no less concerned with the deep problems America continues to face.

It seems unlikely that there will be violent demonstrations soon, for the issues students now feel compelled to move against don't seem to call for the kind of confrontation that was the hallmark of the Sixties. Violent demonstrations against the war were always intended, their leaders said, to bring the violence of the war home. But pollution, the students' deepest concern now, is already home, and bringing pressure against those who are most responsible will be a far more prolonged and subtle battle. There is little doubt, however, that the students will play a great part in leading it.

And students now have another weapon with which to curb the injustices they see: the vote. By our statistics, nearly all of them say they are going to use it. Whether or not they will vote as a bloc is impossible to predict. But the solidarity of their movement over the past years indicates that this is likely. If so, it will represent a powerful and idealistic force.

Their personal style is one of self-exploration--dangerous, sometimes, but in general, the mark of a generation that's trying to move past the failures and hypocrisies of their fathers toward a more humane and equitable society.

At Northwestern University's commencement exercises last spring, many of the 3500 graduating students stood through the national anthem with a raised and clenched fist. Later, one of them said they did because "There is a lot wrong with this country that needs to be undone. We want that fist to tell America that her students are still on the case."

Choosing the Sample

Just under 3000 students, from 60 schools, made up the sample that answered our questionnaire. Computers helped us find random schools in the five geographical areas of the country that would represent the national average of public and private, large and small, urban and suburban colleges and universities. Campus interviewers then gave the questionnaires to selected students who made up a nationally representative balance of males and females, freshmen through seniors, and the correct ratio of business, arts, education, science, agriculture and other academic majors. The answers were put onto punch cards and fed into a computer that printed out general results and then results by demographic categories of sex, class, major, religion, economic background, marital status and present living arrangement. The poll was compiled from these print-outs.